


see yourself through someone else

by ainewrites



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Goononna, Gooverly, Waverly centric, everyone needs therapy honestly, set during the first five episodes of s2 and in the time gap between seasons 2 and 3, the Mictian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-11 07:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainewrites/pseuds/ainewrites
Summary: She tells Nicole she feels different, and she knows that Nicole thinks she means because of Willa, because of the chance that Waverly may not be an Earp, but that’s not the only reason. There’s a wrongness in her gut, settling into her bones, and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do about it.-During, Waverly fights a war in her head, a battle she's only half aware of.After Mikshun, Waverly isn't sure what she's supposed to do.





	1. During

**Author's Note:**

> As I'm sure many people are doing right now, this fic is a fic that has been sitting in my drafts half finished for MONTHS, but the rapidly approaching season three has finally goaded me into finishing it. I've had this in my drafts for probably six months now, but my creative motivation went massively downhill and I'm now finally starting to get it back.
> 
> This fic is a two-parter, the first part focusing on Waverly while she was possessed, and the second part takes place during the gap between season 2 and season 3. I hope to have the second part of the fic up tomorrow, but it still needs to be gone over super quick, and so it's more likely it will be up on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

It coats her fingers, thick and black like tar, and her whole word goes sideways.

-

At first, nothing really seems wrong. Not wrong enough for it to ring any alarm bells in Waverly’s head, at least.

And then, Nicole says she tastes different, a concerned crease between her eyebrows. Waverly shrugs that away, because they have more pressing things to worry about at the moment, like breaking Dolls out of Black Badge and all the chaos that will come with that, and so she tucks the tiny piece of information into the back of her head and promises herself that she’ll consider it later.

But she doesn’t. And maybe she should have.

-

Waverly’s always had a memory like a steel trap. She’s a genius, after all, with an IQ off the charts and near-photographic memory. She’s never been one to zone out mid conversation or to forgot where she was going halfway through a sentence. Which is why it’s odd that she doesn’t remember what Nicole was saying. She blinks, and her sleeves are suddenly splattered with the thick, dark blood of the demon, its head no longer attached to its body. The axe is heavy in her hands, and Nicole is blinking at her in a mixture of shock and horror.

“Holy shit, Waves,” Nicole gasps, not making a move to help as Waverly hauls the demon head up and into a rolling suitcase. She’s pale, wide-eyed with shock, and is looking at Waverly almost like she’s afraid.

“What?” Waverly asks, and Nicole tears her gaze away from the headless carcass on the floor.

“Okay, if you want me to trust you, you’ve got to tell me the plan, preferably before I find you holding an _axe_ over my head.”

“Wynonna made me promise not to,” Waverly says, apologetically, and Nicole sighs, turning away in clear irritation. “She’s my sister, Nicole. I have to protect her now more than ever.”

And it’s the truth, so why does it feel like a lie on her tongue? She steps closer, reaching out to rub Nicole’s arm. “Just like I need to protect you.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says softly, clouds of her breath hanging in the air between them. “I just…I want to make sure you’re okay. You know, that deep down, you’re still my Waverly.”

Something wiggles in the back of Waverly’s mind, an itch she can’t quite scratch. But now is not the time to dwell on that, so she smiles, digging a pair of oversized red-orange glasses from her pocket. “Totally,” she agrees, even as the little itch gets a bit…itchier. “But first, will you help me be someone else?”

That makes Nicole smile, that makes Nicole laugh, and she takes Waverly’s hand. And it’s good, it’s fine, they’re both laughing as Waverly practices the outrageous English accent she needs to master in less than an hour. Everything is fine.

At least, that’s what Waverly tells herself. The weirdness she feels is exhaustion combined with anxiety for Dolls and nerves about breaking into one of the most secure locations in the world. She’s fine.

Like she promised Nicole, she is totally fine.

-

“Hello? Hello? Here to drop off a…oh.”

The lab is dark and smells like rotting flesh barely covered up with chemical cleaner. It seems likes it’s trying its very best to fit the whole secret laboratory from a shady organization thing, which it has down to a T. The lab tech is wearing headphones and doesn’t notice as she calls for his attention, and her own attention is quickly directed elsewhere.

There are racks of jars full of preserved dead things, most of them with too many limbs and too many eyes and too many teeth. Skeletons are posed with wire and hang from hooks, belonging to creatures she does not recognize, nor does she ever particularly want to see in the flesh. And against the back wall are cages.

Blocked off from the rest of the room by a chain link wall, the cages are made of glass and metal, allowing Waverly to see inside. One spews thick mist, and Waverly swears she can see glowing eyes blinking in a far corner. A creature with long, spindly legs jerks itself back inside an…egg? A nest? A shell? when Waverly pauses in front of it, spitting goopy liquid. In another appears to be a young girl, but when she turns, Waverly can see the pallor of her skin and the dead white of her eyes, and she knows that while this thing may resemble a human, it stopped being human long, long ago. It giggles, a sound belonging to the horror movies Waverly never liked watching, and she shudders and continues on.

And in the final cage, there is one of the monsters, identical to the one with a head in her bag and a body back in the homestead’s barn.

“Oh,” she says, stepping closer, curiosity warring with horror and fear. “But you already have one. A big one.”

And then, her phone rings. She swears and scrambles for it, not surprised in the least that it’s Wynonna, who has a tendency to come calling at the worst of times. Wynonna relays her plan, and Waverly agrees to it without hesitating.

She strides over and taps the lab tech on the shoulder. He shrieks, jumps about a foot in the air, and spins around, looking at her with wide eyes and a hand clutched to his chest. And Waverly promptly starts flirting her ass off.

She leans over his chair, doing her _goddamn best_ to flirt her way into getting the guy to give up the information for opening the security doors. He does not seem to care. When he does give up the necessary information (“Option J-3!”) he does it, Waverly senses, out of more pride for the system than from her so-called feminine wiles.

Still, though, it’s what she needs, so she promptly smashes him over the head with a lunchbox. She expects him to pass out, like in the movies, but he just cries out in pain, his hand going to the back of his head. It comes away shiny with blood, and he looks at her in anger.

“We can’t bleed in here!”

“Why not?”

“Because it will smell it!”

He barely has time to get the word out before the demon bursts through the glass wall of its cage. Which seems like a very bad idea, considering how easily it shattered. The demon bangs against the chain-link divider, snarling and clearly trying its very best to break through. Which it does. Very easily, in a shower of yellow sparks.

Waverly and the lab tech both shriek, and she barely has time to grab the laptop and follow him into a closet before the beast bangs against the door.

“Why did you hit me?!” The guy asks, utterly befuddled, and Waverly shoves the fake glasses further up her nose, the oh-so-familiar sense of _oh my god, I’m about to be eaten by a monster_ making her heart feel like it’s trying to beat its way out of her chest.

“Okay! My name is Waverly, Waverly Earp!”

“What happened to your accent?”

“And I’m not here with Scotland Yard, I’m here with my sister and Doc Holliday and a super-secret agent all to rescue Dolls!”

The tech, previously freaking out over the mere mention of the name Doc Holliday, stops. “Dolls? Agent Xavier Dolls?”

Waverly babbles the confirmation, and apparently, that’s all it takes for the guy to agree to help.

Which is great and all, but they’re still trapped in a closet.

-

She remembers creeping out of closet with the guy, and she remembers the so-called Devourer of Souls charging for them. She remembers Wynonna shooting it.

She doesn’t remember anything between then, but the guy, who she later learns is named Jeremy, tells her in the car back to Purgatory that she stared it down. That she stepped forward, and the demon stepped away.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on the missing time immedietely though, because they’re charging through the halls of Black Badge after Wynonna, and they need to save Dolls and Doc now too, apparently, and she’s sure it’s nothing, she’ll figure it out later.

They save Dolls, and at the same time manage to swear their souls away to Black Badge, _in blood_ , and earn a couple of new allies (one extremely reluctant, the other mildly star-struck), and are in the car with Nicole in less than an hour.

And it really hits her. She stared down a demon, she made a demon back down. And there’s that wiggling in the back of her brain but she’s fine, it was fine, it was nothing.

Right?

-

It wasn’t nothing. She knows this, now, it wasn’t nothing, it was something, but she isn’t sure what that something is.

She tells Nicole she feels different, and she knows that Nicole thinks she means because of Willa, because of the chance that Waverly may not be an Earp, but that’s not the only reason. There’s a wrongness in her gut, settling into her bones, and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do about it.

It constantly feels like the world is being swept out from under her feet, like there’s something missing inside her, like she’s never on solid ground.

But with Nicole, it’s like her feet are once more planted, and she breathe again. So she wraps her arms around Nicole’s neck and kisses her like Nicole is the only thing filling her lungs, like Nicole is the only thing keeping her grounded, and her head is clear again.

She hadn’t realized how foggy it was before now.

“Are you sure?” Nicole asks, and Waverly is so, so sure, and then they’re on the bed and they’re kissing again, and Waverly lets herself sink into the hunger, the wanting, and clutches at Nicole like she’s her lifeline, because she desperately, desperately wants to keep her head clear.

Later, afterwards, they’re in bed and in a comfortable silence, and Waverly’s head is a storm. Because what just happened felt so _right_ that is has elevated the feeling of wrongness that floats through her body the rest of the time.

“Nicole?”

“Hmm?” Nicole hums, lazy and sleepy, on hand resting gently on Waverly’s stomach. She burrows further under the blankets and opens her eyes.

“I…” Waverly starts, and trails off. “I don’t feel…”

“Is something wrong?” Nicole rolls off her stomach and onto her back to prop herself up, and Waverly instantly wishes Nicole was still touching her, because without the contact there’s the strange fog creeping up again, and Waverly is so, so unsure of how to say it, but when she tries, tries to force the words _I don’t feel right_ from her mouth, they don’t come.

Like something is holding them back.

So she puts on a bright smile and asks if Nicole is hungry, but Nicole shakes her head and flops back down into the pillows, pulling the blanket back up.

“Come back quickly,” she says, and Waverly promises to do so.

As soon as she leaves the bedroom, the fog is back.

-

She comes back into herself with melting ice cream on the kitchen counter and a horrible taste in her mouth. She throws up into the sink and what comes up makes her throw up again, until her stomach is cramping and her throat burns from bile.

Shaking, she washes out her mouth with water and runs the garbage disposal, then brushes her teeth until her gums are red and raw.

She’s still shaking when she gets back in bed with a now dozing Nicole, and despite the warmth of the bed, she feels so, so cold.

-

Her lipstick is missing, but she can taste it on her tongue, waxy and vaguely sweet, the texture coating the inside of her mouth with an unpleasant film.

She kisses Nicole on the mouth while she’s on duty, even though she would normally never do that. Nicole pushes her away, tells her that she’s on duty, and Waverly steps away and crosses her arms.

“Not good enough.” The words fall from her tongue before she even knows what she’s saying, even though it is a good enough excuse, even though Waverly knows that she should _never, ever_ kiss a cop on duty in front of other people, girlfriend or no.

She wraps her arms around herself and the fog is creeping up again in the corners of her brain and she tries to push it away, she really tries. She grits her teeth and she fights, but the world is rocking beneath her feet again and she knows it’s only so long before the waves will become a full-on tsunami.

-

Something is not right. She doesn’t know what it is, but there is a wrongness in her in head, in her bones.

She makes an appointment with a doctor and cancels it two days later. She makes an appointment with a psychologist and does the same.

She stands in front of the local hospital for an hour, unable to force herself to go inside, even though the temperature outside is low enough that she can feel the cold in her chest with every inhale.

She knows she should talk to someone, tell someone that something is wrong, but she can’t. Can’t force her feet to move or start the car to go to that appointment.

The wrongness isn’t the only thing. The blackness is more frequent, lasts longer. Whole hours are gone from her memory, just wiped clean like they were never there. She keeps finding things in her pockets; spoons from silverware sets they don’t own and silver jewelry she doesn’t recognize. One day she finds at least silver eight candlesticks in her bathroom, another and there’s a ball of silver jewelry wire rolling around on the floor.

She doesn’t remember finding any of them. Doesn’t remember buying any of them. But when she goes to get rid of them she can’t force her hand to move. Can’t throw them away. But they always disappear.

She just can’t remember doing anything with them.

-

She’s outside, in the freezing cold, so cold that her toes ache in her boots and her body trembles, and Wynonna looks so concerned.

“What are you doing out here?” Wynonna asks, jogging across the yard to her sister, and Waverly sobs, just once, just a little bit. She was sleepwalking, she tells Wynonna, and so Wynonna wraps a coat around Waverly’s shoulders and ushers her back inside, back towards the warmth, and although Waverly knows that Wynonna is talking, she can’t focus on what she’s saying.

She wasn’t sleepwalking. She knows that. She had a knife in her hand and she wasn’t sleepwalking, because she remembers getting out of bed that morning. She was sitting in the kitchen having tea, and then she was outside.

She wasn’t sleepwalking.

But she has no idea what she was doing, and that sends the sickening swirl of fear through her chest.

-

Waverly just wants to prove herself, prove she’s worthy of Black Badge, so she signs up for a mission. Naturally, things go array barely ten minutes into it, one of the workers mistaking her for a performer, a singer, and she ends up shoved into a dressing room with a fifteen-minute warning.

There’s a rack of dresses again the back wall, a large mirror, and a table in front of it, makeup spread out in long rows. She takes a deep breath and sits down, and gets to work. And she looks good by the end of it, if she does say so herself. Her eyeshadow is smoky, her eyeliner perfect, and she ties a large gray fabric flower into her hair. And it’s a pity that she won’t be able to leave with the gown she chose, because she would have loved to see Nicole’s reaction to her wearing it. It’s form-fitting with a long slit up the left leg and a plunging neckline, sparking gold silk that feels cool against her skin.

And she can feel everyone’s eyes on her as soon as she steps up onto the stage, more than one gaze dragging up and down her body in a way that makes her want to squirm and cover up. She wasn’t ever supposed to be up here, on stage in front of everyone, and so she takes a deep breath and has to decide to wing it.

Which is fine, she can watch for the mark—a demon with a large silver briefcase –from up here, and even though the first attempt at starting the song doesn’t go so great, her voice cracking from nerves at the first word, the second start goes much, much better.

The song she picks is one Willa used to sing, sexy and sinister, and even though so many years have passed since Waverly last heard it, she still knows it by heart. It’s funny, how Willa still creeps into her life, even after her death. And maybe she needs a little bit of Willa’s fierceness tonight.

She croons into the microphone, both hands wrapped around it, and she watches the man walk in, briefcase in hand. As she sings, she watches him shake hands, and get up to leave again, and hastily, tripping a little bit on the first step, she climbs down from the stage and drapes herself over him to stall him, still singing.

And, when she’s done, when the last word has been uttered and the man, the demon, disappears down the hall, she tosses her hair back, gives a little curtsy to everyone applauding, drops the microphone, and goes after him as fast as she can.

It happens so fast, after the gunshot and the body hitting the floor and the panicked “tacos are tasty!” half-shouted, half-whispered into her comm. But before she knows it Wynonna is there and then there’s another person with a gun, and suddenly, they’re both tied to chairs.

Waverly wishes she could say that this turn of events is surprising, but it really isn’t.

Even their attempt at escape goes about as well as to be expected. Waverly’s hands are untied, and she’s forced up and onto the table. The demon or revenant or businessman or whatever the hell he is winds the crank on something that looks scarily like it was attached to the table for this very purpose, trapping her hand just above her wrist, tight enough that she can feel tingles in her fingers as the blood circulation is cut off. Panicking, gasping, she yanks at her wrist, trying to free it, and she isn’t listening to Wynonna in the background, but she can hear the panic in her sister’s voice.

And, with a horrible crunching sound, the demon raises his hand and out of it slowly sprouts two long, sharp pieces of bone.  Waverly gasps, twisting around to look Wynonna in the eye, and panic makes her gasp out the answer the demon was looking for. He presses the sharp bones down against Waverly’s wrist, and she gasps, a tear running down her cheek. She can feel her skin split, can feel the first drops of blood run down her wrist.

Wynonna is frantic, still tied in her chair, shouting out possible answers, but none of them are right, and the demon says he just thinks they’re stalling. He slices the razer sharp piece of bone across Waverly’s wrist, and she gags, gasps, the pain hot, the blood that drips down her wrist hotter still.

“Let her go!” Wynonna shouts in the background, “And I’ll get you the combination!”

Waverly whimpers, tears streaking down her cheeks, biting her lip against the pain. “Wynonna,” she whispers, and Wynonna yanks herself free. She’s up and charging the older blonde woman in the corner of the room, who knocks her against a wall and snarls.

“That,” the demon says, “Was dumb.”

Waverly barely has time to look away before his hand swings down.

The pain comes a millisecond after she hears her hand hit the floor. It’s lightning arching up her arm, setting her on fire. She screams and Wynonna screams too, and she can hear the sound of her blood hitting the floor. She gags, vomits what little was in her stomach onto the floor, the agony making her stomach churn.

The demon wraps a towel around the stump of her wrist, and she gags again, cries out, her vision spinning beneath her. She turns her head, sobbing, and wishes she would just pass out, unable to concentrate on anything but the pain.

Wynonna is talking in the background, and it doesn’t make it through the haze of pain covering her entire being. She tries to push herself up, tries to free herself, but that sends another jolt of pain up her arm and she collapses against the table, still crying. And then, Wynonna does the Wynonna thing and gets free, gets Waverly up and off the table.

Waverly hangs off her sister, her other—her remaining –hand keeping the blood-soaked towel tight against her wrist. The demon appears, shoots his second in command and trains the gun on Wynonna and Waverly.

The pain is crashing against Waverly’s senses, overriding everything, the only thing her hazy mind can stay focused on. But the demon is in front of them and they have nowhere else to go.

Waverly kicks him.

He goes down, and Wynonna pulls her forward. Waverly stumbles on her heels, letting Wynonna guide her down the halls, until they reach the room with the stage and the bar, now empty of patrons. And there’s Doc, waiting. Wynonna lies Waverly down on a couch and Doc rushes over, leaning down over her.

“Hold on a little longer,” Doc says, wrapping a hand around the towel Waverly still clutches to her wrist. The slight movement makes her moan as the towel shifts against the exposed flesh of her wrist. “This will staunch the flow until we can get you to the hospital.”

There’s a sound in the background of ice crashing against ice, and Wynonna’s boots against the floor. “I’ll find her hand!”

“What for?” Doc asks, standing up.

“It’s called modern medicine, Doc!”

Waverly pushes herself a little upright, and blacks out.

The next thing she’s aware of, she has both her hands and Doc is yelling for Wynonna. She stares at it, flexes her fingers, and blinks, confused. And then, she notices the bloody towel next to her. She gasps, and jumps up from the couch.

“Wait, who got hurt?” she asks, looking Doc over for blood or any sort of wound.

Wynonna looks at her, a large metal ice bucket clutched to her chest. “You,” Wynonna says, shock written in every corner of her face.

Waverly looks down at her hands, and there’s the tiniest flicker of memory in the back of her brain, of pain, of blood, but she can’t access it. She bats at it, but can’t quiet snare it, can’t quite bring it into focus.

She looks up at her sister, at Doc, and whispers, “No?”

-

Wynonna tells her that the demon cut off her hand. Waverly comes up with excuses, said she turned her head away, but she sits in the passenger seat of the car and she can taste the salt from tears on her tongue. The back of her throat scratches, and she keeps coughing, trying to clear it, but it feels like she’s been screaming.

She remembers, but she also doesn’t. She remembers being up on the table, remembers the demon’s rough hands, remembers the metal biting into her wrist. But after that, it’s a haze until Wynonna has her off the table. Between that, it’s fuzzy. Not the thick, heavy blackness that falls over her during all the other time she’s lost. This is thin, barely there, slipping through her fingers like sand when she tries to grasp it.

She opens and closes her hand, flexing and clenching her fingers against her leg. Her beautiful gold gown is flecked in blood, and she feels like it’s hers. But it’s doesn’t make sense, she’s not bleeding. No one is bleeding, despite the bloody towel.

She didn’t loose her hand, because hands don’t magically grow back. In all her research on the unhuman inhabitants of the Ghost River Triangle she’s never read about limb regeneration before; even revenant’s limbs don’t regrow after being cut off, at least not while they’re still on earth. They come back from hell as whole as they ever were.

But she’s not a revenant (maybe), and she definitely hasn’t been to hell because she feels like that’s something she’d remember. So, she didn’t lose her hand.

Waverly exhales, shuddering, and Wynonna glances over at her. “You okay, babygirl?”

Aware of both her sister’s attention and Doc’s in the backseat, gazes sharp, Waverly forces a bright smile onto her face. “I’m totally fine!” She brandishes both hands upwards, and Wynonna smiles back, a little tightly, sure, but she returns her focus to the road.

Waverly lets her hands drop again. She couldn’t have lost her hand. It’s right here, flesh and bone.

But she’s not wearing her rings.

When she left the house that morning, she was wearing two on her left hand, both simple gold bands she’s had for ages. She had on nail polish, too, but while the nails on her right hand are still the same dark brownish-gray, the nails of her left are plain. As if she did one hand and forgot the other.

There’s that feeling of wrongness again, and Waverly shivers, wrapping her arms around herself.

As soon as they get back to the homestead, Waverly is already in the process of stripping the gown, and the experience, from her body.

-

Waverly knew the combination all along. Of course she did; she spent her life studying the Earps and Purgatory and their history, and she knows the all the days the Earps became the heir, as well as all the dates they died. 

And it works. She hears the click of the lock unlocking, and she and Wynonna lean forward as Wynonna opens the briefcase to reveal…

“A plate,” Wynonna says, staring down at the small, porcelain plate, painted with a cutesy, colorful little version of the town.

“Huh,” Waverly says, straightening up. “Are you going to give it to Lucado?”

“Hell no, you lost-“ Wynonna cuts herself off, mid gesture at Waverly’s left hand. “-nearly lost a hand over it.”

Waverly looks away, giving her hand a little wave. She curls her right hand around her left wrist, a sick feeling rising in her stomach. She turns away from her sister, unable to bear the weight of Wynonna’s gaze, of the inevitable questions.

“We should talk about the…the demon,” Wynonna says, and Waverly’s vision goes black.

And then, it comes back, but she’s aware, so aware that she’s not the one in charge of her body anymore, and there’s something else sharing her head.

“-and I want to help, anyway I can,” Wynonna is saying, and Waverly’s mouth moves, but it’s not her words coming out.

“Good,” the demon says, and Waverly can feel it smiling. “Because I am so sick of fighting her.”

Waverly screams, stuck in the cage of her own occupied mind, but she can’t make her body move. The demon’s words spill from her mouth, leaving the taste of tar on her tongue.

“She’s so strong,” the demon purrs, and its satisfaction pours through Waverly’s head.

“The thing inside of you?” Wynonna asks, no emotion in her voice.

The demon makes Waverly turn, and black tears pour hot down Waverly’s face, oil and water, and Waverly’s entire being is burning.

“No,” the demon says, voice deepening, echoing, tilting its—Waverly’s –head, and turns to face Wynonna. “The thing outside of me. Waverly.”

Waverly screams inside the prison of her own head, beating her fists against the bars of her cage, the demon shoving her deeper, deeper, deeper. It’s allowing her to remember. Out of cruelty, out of a sick sort of pride, out of amusement. Its emotions crash over her, a tidal wave she’s too tired to fight.

She’s been fighting all this time, she just hasn’t been aware of it. A war going inside her own mind, a battle over her body, the supernatural thing inhabiting it claiming ownership over her.

Wynonna steps back, shock and concern clear on her face. She raises Peacemaker, and the runes flare orange, and the demon, Waverly, can feel the heat that comes off it. The promise of hellfire, the promise of the pit.

The demon curls up, content in Waverly’s mind, amusement flitting through every pore. It raises Waverly’s chin, looking Wynonna straight in the face with black, soulless eyes. “Like you’re going to kill another sister.”

“I won’t let you kill her, either,” Wynonna says, her voice cracking, Peacemaker not wavering.

“If only. She’s been resisting me so hard.” The demon’s anger courses through Waverly, her struggles stopping at the wave of pain the anger brings. “I’m exhausted. Do you know how much energy it takes to regrow a human hand?”

The demon lets the memories come crashing back through, fresh as if she’s reliving them, pain filling her entire body. Waverly curls up within her mind and screams, the pain washing over her, her fragile, fragile self, but the demon looking through Waverly’s eyes doesn’t even blink.

Waverly barely notices that Wynonna lowers Peacemaker, her name barely making it through the fog that the demon casts over her.

“Waverly, babygirl, if you’re still in there-“

“I’m not having any fun!” The demon snaps, but there’s a sort of sour anticipation, an excitement, as it sidles up to Wynonna, biting Waverly’s lip.

“But you,” it purrs, looking up to meet Wynonna’s eyes. “You like to have fun.”

And Waverly beats her fists and screams louder than she thinks she’s ever screamed, fights the demon tooth and claw and nail within her own head, because Waverly needs to protect her sister. She will stop fighting, she will let the demon take over but she needs to protect her sister.

But the demon’s mind is made up, and it bats Waverly away like an irritating fly.

“I’m a real hoot,” Wynonna says, leaning away from Waverly’s hand as the demon reaches up to stroke her hair, the first real flickers of fear starting to appear.

“Oh,” it whispers, “You’ll be so easy.”

And it leaves. It feels like it’s pulling all of Waverly’s organs out of her body as it does so, trying to take everything that makes Waverly _Waverly_ as it floods from her mouth and into Wynonna’s, but she digs in her nails and fights it.

And she _inhales_.

This time, when the blackness comes, it’s soft and warm and welcoming.

-

Waverly’s not surprised to wake up tied to a chair.

She wakes up in the homestead’s kitchen, Wynonna, or Demon-Wynonna, about two inches away from her face. She shrieks, it laughs and kisses her nose before bouncing over to the kitchen window.

“Good morning!” It sings, flinging open the window to let the icy wind into the kitchen. Giggling to itself, it pulls a blender, full of what Waverly guesses is milk and tequila  judging by the empty bottles on the counter, closer.

“Home fries,” The demon says in Wynonna’s voice, plopping a couple of thick wedges of potato into the liquid. “Bacon…” It lowers in a couple of thick slabs, before turning to a cutting board on the counter, exposing the thing on it.

Bile rises in Waverly’s throat as the think pretending to be Wynonna squeezes the dead rat, sighing to itself.

“Hmm, fresh.” It plops the rat in the blender. “The piece de resistance. Bloody Mary.”

It turns to grin at Waverly, eyes no longer black. Waverly tugs at the belt binding her to the chair, fighting the urge to gag.

“You could show the teeniest bit of excitement,” Not-Wynonna says, slapping the blender lid on.

“We’re not really smoothie people,” Waverly says, glaring, and Not-Wynonna presses start. The grayish-white liquid inside instantly turns red, the grinding and crunching sound loud enough to be heard over Not-Wynonna’s cackle.

Waverly takes a deep breath, fighting down the sickness and horror rising in her throat, unable to tear her eyes away. She is never going to be able to use that blender again. Hell, she’s never going to be able to drink a Bloody Mary again.

“Beautiful.” The demon stops the blender, pulling the rat’s tail from the glop inside. “Garnish.” It picks up a glass from the counter, the edge already rimmed in salt, and raises the blender.

The mass that pours out is thick and chunky, patches of the rat’s fur still visible. Waverly gags once at the sight alone, and then the smell hits her and she gags again. The iron tang of blood and the sharp punch of alcohol along with the thick smell of decomposing flesh. She finally manages to tear her eyes away, focusing all her energy onto not throwing up.

“Oh, you’re not vegan, are you?” The demon, taking entirely too much glee out of this entire situation, hums and picks up a long silver spoon, stirring the glop inside the glass.

The sight of the silver ignites a memory. It’s blurry, almost like she’s watching it through someone else’s eyes, but it’s clear enough that she can actually grab hold of it.

“Spoons! Shiny things! Metal! I…I was collecting them for you.” For what, she couldn’t remember. The blackouts, while no longer total blackouts, are still hazy and indistinct, dreamlike rather than sharp and clear.

“Hm. I checked the barn. Twelve hours to go, and still some work to be done.” Not-Wynonna slams her hand down on the table, her other hand holding the disgusting concoction. It leans forward. “Way to go, slacker.”

The glass is in Waverly’s face, the smell hitting her stronger, and she leans back, gagging again.

“Hey, I salted the rim!” The demon looks at Waverly in a way that is suddenly so _Wynonna_ that she nearly cries. All snark and irritation, eyebrow raised and hip cocked. “I’m not a savage.”

“Wynonna, I know you’re in there.” Waverly leans forward, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, trying not to let the demon know how scared she is. “Come on. You can fight this thing!”

It sneaks in anyways, Waverly pleading with her big sister, and the demon just blinks at her, raising a finger.

“Ah, no. You could fight me. It was exhausting.” The demon leans back against the table dramatically, and Waverly can see the pieces of Wynonna bleeding through. “Being inside you, all the goodness…”

“You were in my brain. I’ll remember a weakness.” Waverly pushes all the anger, all the days and weeks and months she spent, sharing a space in her head with this thing into her voice. “Fighting demons is what we do!”

Instantly, Wynonna’s eyes are black, the sense that Waverly is in the presence of something ancient, something very much not human pouring over her. It grabs the back of her neck, roughly pulling her forward. She squeaks, fear curdling in her belly.

“What’d you think I’d do?” It snarls, voice deep and echoing, no longer holding any trace of Wynonna. “Any idea how many of your friends will survive the day?”

The fear instantly turns to terror, ice shooting through her veins, and she knows it shows on her face.

“In fact…” the demon shoves Waverly backwards, and she whimpers before she can stop the sound from sliding out. She clenches her hands so tightly that her nails dig into her palms in and attempt to stop herself from shaking.

The demon scrabbles on the counter, raising a saw above its head. Waverly chokes, staring at the rusty, blood-stained tool turned weapon.

“No, no Wynonna,” Waverly begs, and she’s not sure if she’s calling to her sister, trapped somewhere in the back of her mind, or pleading to the demon stalking towards her. The demon lowers the saw agonizingly slowly, angling it towards Waverly’s neck.

She’s already had a hand cut off, the memory of the pain fresh in her mind, and that was a clean slice, off in one go. This, if the demon saws her head off, this will be another kind of pain, agony in a level unknown. She whimpers and pleads, kicking her feet and yanking at the bonds that hold her to that chair in a desperate attempt to fear herself.

“No, no, no, Wynonna, please!” She’s crying, forcing herself to look in the demon’s eyes, trying to call her sister out.

“Ah!” Wynonna drops the saw like it burns, pain etched across every corner of her face. But it’s her face, ad Waverly cries harder in relief. “Waves!”

“Wynonna! Yeah! Yes!” She fights her bonds, every atom in her body telling her to touch her sister, to hug her sister, to promise her everything is going to be fine and that she can fight this thing inside her.

But she’s not sure if Wynonna can. The demon is getting stronger, and Wynonna stays hunched, eyes squinted in pain.

“It hurts, but I’m _trying_.”

“Come on, come on please,” Waverly says, trying to will her sister into fighting harder, trying to send her the strength she needs to keep the demon at bay.

But she knows that Wynonna is fighting a loosing battle. She remembers the pain of fighting, the demon’s poison fire in your veins, and now, the demon is strengthened by anger, by the new body.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Wynonna whispers, and one second it’s utterly Wynonna, and then the next, Doc’s car horn honks and Not-Wynonna slaps her own cheek and stands up, eyes a black, soulless void.

“Ride’s here.” Not-Wynonna stands up, tilting as if she’s tipsy, and turns back towards the counter.

Waverly gasps in shock at the sudden switch, but she doesn’t have time to say anything before the demon is shoving a dishtowel into her mouth.

“This will have to wait. Eat up!” Not-Wynonna shoves it so far into Waverly’s mouth that she gags around it, and laughs. She turns briefly to shut the window, then darts over, grasping Waverly’s shoulder and leaning down to hiss in her ear.

“Catch you on the flippity-flop!”  Not-Wynonna kisses Waverly’s cheek, and walks away, whistling. Waverly can hear it pick up the briefcase from were it rests against the hall closet door.

She screams around the towel, hoping Doc can hear her outside, hoping someone can hear her.

No one does.

Not-Wynonna leaves the house, slamming the door behind her, wasting no time in immedietely flirting with Doc, and so Waverly wastes no time in zeroing her gaze onto the chef knife tucked among the other kitchen tools. She throws her weight to the side, digging her feet into the floor as much as she can to try and scoot herself along.

It’s desperate and not likely to work, she knows that, but as she bounces and shifts, trying to move the chair across the floor, she screams into the dishtowel in her mouth, trying to dislodge it, and prays that her noises, nowhere near silent, are enough to get Doc’s attention outside. She finally gets close enough to the counter that she can raise a leg and kick, sending the knife into the sink and the other kitchen tools scattering.

And through the window, she watches Doc, holding a tray of coffee, and Not-Wynonna climb into Doc’s car. But she’s not willing to give up, she can’t give up, and so she throws her weight to the side, back and forth, rocking the chair, because maybe she can make it to the door, if she can just shift the direction of the chair.

But she goes a little bit too far, and the entire chair tips, sending her crashing to the floor. Pain arches up her shoulder and she screams in frustration.

And hears Doc drive away.

-

She finally gets the dishtowel from her mouth and screams herself hoarse. She hears the door open and lies, frantic, that she’s armed, but instead of the demon or of some other nasty coming like she feared, instead it’s Dolls. Standing over her with a gun.

Not quite believing that it’s her and not the demon.

Which isn’t great, but she manages to convince him that it’s her.

By breaking down in front of him as a memory comes to the forefront of her mind about him, stepping over his bleeding, wounded form in the barn. It’s not great, but she’s no longer trapped on the floor and screaming for help, which is a mild improvement but not much.

The demon is still out there, with Wynonna’s face and Wynonna’s body and Wynonna’s voice, but nothing else.

She hates how relieved she feels that it’s no longer in her.

She tells Dolls it feels like a thousand tiny fingers in her brain, prying and ripping and shredding, and now that it’s not there, it’s a relief like nothing she’s ever experienced. It’s like taking a deep breath after having your ribs wrapped so tightly that you could barely draw in air, and suddenly you’re free, and your lungs can expand again.

And now that it’s gone, she remembers the fight. How even when she was _her_ , it was still there, keeping a part of her tied up, a part of her quiet, a part of her unremembering. A fog in the back of her mind, a wall she couldn’t break through. She remembers the pain.

She barely gets a chance to breathe, though, before Lucado is there and pointing a gun at the back of Dolls’ head. She wants the briefcase, she’s pissed off, Dolls is pissed off, and it turns to a dirty little tussle in the kitchen for Lucado’s gun. They break the banister of the staircase, break the window looking into Wynonna’s room that they _just_ replaced, and basically do their very best to kill each other before Waverly manages to free herself, scoops up a gun, and fires at the ceiling.

“Quit it, you assholes!”

Maybe it’s the gunshot, or maybe it’s because of how viciously she tells them that Wynonna is still possessed, but they actually stop trying to murder each other and stand up. Waverly picks up Peacemaker, tucks the gun into her pocket, curling her hand around it.

Dolls and Waverly take turns briefing Lucado on the drive to the Sheriff’s station, and Waverly is fully expecting for Dolls and Lucado to branch off and come up with a plan that hopefully doesn’t involve putting a bullet through Wynonna’s skull while she fills Nicole in on the whole situation, but when they get there, they find Doc waiting for them, a furious Not-Wynonna in the trunk of his car.

“She drank her coffee with cream and sugar,” he explains as he and Dolls stand over the trunk, Waverly waiting with the door open. “And she didn’t have Peacemaker.”

And now, Waverly watches, guilt sour in her stomach, as Dolls and Doc drag a thrashing, snarling Not-Wynonna down the (thankfully) empty corridors of the Sheriff’s station, towards the empty holding cell.

“I should have never touched the goo. I’m so sorry, Wynonna!”

“Hellfire shall quicken your flesh and devour your soul,” The demon snarls as the two men wrestle it into the holding cell. “Dragging you into its everlasting depths!”

They get Not-Wynonna into the cell, and the door shuts with an echoing clang that Waverly can feel in her chest.

-

Lucado is dead and spread around the office and dripping from the ceiling, and Dolls calls the demon a name.

Mikshun. The word curls around in Waverly’s brain and she shudders, and although she knows it is no longer there, that it resides in the holding cell, alternating between screaming and maniacal laughter and dead silence, it feels like the name brings a piece of it with it. It makes her feel like she wants to make a shower and scrub it from her body.

But she can’t take the time, because Dolls may have a way to kill it, but they need it out of Wynonna, and she may have an idea.

She hates it, it makes her skin crawl, it makes her feel like there are ants under her skin, but she makes the decision before she can talk herself out of it.

Not-Wynonna lounges in the holding cell, popping to her feet and sidling over when it sees Waverly come in.

“Had a chance to regroup with your ginger pop-tart?” It asks, and it sounds like Wynonna when she’s teasing but with none of the warmth behind it. And it’s tempting, to leave this cell and go find solace in Nicole’s company, to come up with another plan together, one that doesn’t involve… _this_ , but she steels herself and raises her chin.

The demon giggles. “I might have caused some trouble.”

This is…worrying, but there are other things more important to deal with right now, and any riffled feathers can be smoothed later with explanations. Because Waverly remembers having a ticking clock in her head that the demon was very, very focused on, and she knows that that the deadline is close.

“We’re running out of time,” she says, and to her surprise, her voice is calm and betrays none of the emotions that are currently boiling over inside her.

“She’s a boring cop,” Not-Wynonna says, and Waverly can’t tell if it’s acting unconcerned to try and downplay how concerned it actually is, or if it just likes trying to rile Waverly up. “You…are not boring. I don’t want to ruin the surprise…but you’ve got dark corners you haven’t explored yet.”

The demon wiggles its eyebrows. Some weird form of flattery? Some way of trying to make Waverly upset? She’s not sure, and she can’t think about it right now, so she shakes her head to clear her mind and takes a deep breath.

“I’m not enough to save you, Wynonna,” she says, hoping that somewhere in there, her sister can hear her. Can understand why she’s doing this. Will not be too mad at her when this is all over, whatever the end may be.

Not-Wynonna rolls its eyes. “Okay, are we having a moment?”

“Hey,” Waverly whispers, and _prays_ that Wynonna, her sister, the person she trusts most in the world to finish this, to save her, is listening. “But you’re enough to save me.”

“Huh? No. If you’re gonna sob, you’re gonna have to sob louder.”

“I trust you.” And Waverly does, pours all that trust into those three words.

“What?” The demon snaps, confused, and Waverly reaches through the bars, crashes Not-Wynonna’s face into them, and presses Peacemaker to Mikshun’s cheek. It cries out, the gun sizzling against its skin, and Waverly hopes that she’s not burning Wynonna, too.

“There is only one way,” she whispers,  before she can talk herself out of it, before she can let the fear take over again. “There is only one way to make it stop, and you know what it is, Mikshun!”

Not-Wynonna groans, eyes pitch black, and Waverly leans forward and inhales.

It’s ice in her lungs and fire in her throat and a demon purring in her head, and Waverly hopes she’s made the right choice.

-

This time, the demon whispers to her.

“Not and ideal fit,” it says, curling up in her mind, hissing at the thought of Wynonna. “Too crowded.”

“The heir is fun,” it purrs, and Waverly cringes away. “But you are clever.”

“You have dark corners,” it whispers, “Secrets hidden away.”

Waverly wraps her hands around the steering wheel, clenching her hands until her knuckles turn white, and she relishes the tiny, tiny amount of control over her body.

Inside her mind, the demon whispers and laughs.

-

Nicole’s in the barn, and the demon’s displeasure is stark and clear, but Waverly, fading quietly in the back corners of her mind, feels the fog burn away around her, just a little bit.

“Look, I know you need space and I tried to stay away, but I got worried.” Concern bleeds into Nicole’s every movement, every word, as the demon glowers, creeping forward. “And there’s signs of struggle in the house and Waverly…what the _hell_ is this thing?” She gestures at the tower of metal in the barn, at the things that Waverly’s been collecting for the demon for months, pulling pieces off of it.

“Stop! Stop!” The demon rushes forward, snatching the things from Nicole’s hand to return them to their rightful places.

“What?!” Nicole steps back, hands in the air. “Are you kidding? There is a _thunder snowstorm_ coming, this thing is going to attract lightning like crazy. The whole barn could go up in flames!”

But that’s what the demon wants. The demon wants fire and lightning, and the reason why is suddenly clear. Because if lightning hits it while it’s inside Waverly’s body, she will not longer exist. It will just be the demon, wearing Waverly like a costume while the real Waverly dies quietly in the back of her own mind.

Waverly gasps, and concern replaces the utter bemusement in Nicole’s face. Softness replaces anger, and she wraps her arms around Waverly. “Baby. Baby, what is it?” She asks, hugging Waverly tight.

The demon scowls, but Waverly pushes forward, the contact clearing more fog from her mind. But the demon can sense this, and it stomps Waverly down, hissing, while at the same time it lies to Nicole.

“It’s Wynonna, she’s possessed,” it says into Nicole’s shoulder while she strokes its hair. “Like, demon took over her body, planning to kill us all possessed.”

Nicole takes what she thinks is Waverly by the shoulders. “Did she hurt you?” she asks, a little frantic, looking Not-Waverly up and down for injuries while real Waverly screams.

“Yeah,” Not-Waverly says, voice breaking, and real Waverly viciously swears, calling the demon every foul name she can think of while it laughs.

“Where is she. On the homestead?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got you now, okay?” Nicole brushes a hand across Not-Waverly’s cheek before positioning her behind her. “I swear, I’ve got you.” She pulls out her gun, aims it at the door of the barn, and Waverly screams and behind Nicole’s back, the demon smiles.

-

The demon makes a mistake, and tells Nicole to shoot Wynonna, because it sees the flask in Wynonna’s hand and is suddenly afraid.

And Waverly fights, she pulls the last of her strength from the corners she didn’t know she had and she fights. Thunder crashes above their heads and Mikshun wraps a hand around one of the pieces in the metal tower and Wynonna pleads and Nicole groans on the floor and Waverly _fights_.

“Remember when you made me drink grape soda ‘til it came out my nose?” Waverly gasps out in one breath, and Wynonna’s entire face lights up.

“Yeah!”

Wynonna punches her in the stomach, flips her over her shoulder and onto the floor, and crawls on top of her, straddling her stomach. She plugs Waverly’s nose, and the demon, thrashing inside of Waverly’s head, panics at the lack of air, and eventually surrenders, gasping when the burning from lack of oxygen gets to be too much.

Wynonna upends the bottle over Waverly’s mouth, then claps a hand over it to prevent Mikshun from spitting it out.

“Drink!” Wynonna demands, even as Mikshun struggles under her. “Drink it! Swallow! Okay!”

Waverly swallows.

Wynonna barely has time to get her upright before she vomits, and what comes out of her is slick and black like tar, pooling up on the floor of the barn, and forms a serpentine shape with a mouth like a leech. Mikshun rears up and roars, hissing as Wynonna stands up.

Waverly falls backwards onto the straw, gasping, and hears Wynonna pull out Peacemaker.

“Mikshun, I’d say make your peace,” her sister says, and Waverly props herself up on her elbows to watch her raise the gun. “But I hope you never find any.”

The shot echoes through the barn, and Mikshun shrieks one more time.

And then it’s gone.

-

Mikshun is gone, and they’re all fine, but Waverly can’t stop, not yet, because something it whispered to her in those final hours has stuck in her head.

She’s exhausted, can barely stand, and the drugstore bag that swings from her hand feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. But she needs to do this.

Wynonna needs to do this, because they need to know.

And, if she stops, she’ll start thinking, and she’s not sure she can do that, yet. Mikshun lived in her head for seven weeks, controlled her like a puppet for seven weeks, and the longer she knows that, the longer she thinks about it, the more she wants to rip her skin off and start again with a new body and a new mind it never touched.

Waverly sits on the steps of the house, the paper bag on her lap. She hears Wynonna’s footsteps, and her sister comes around the corner smiling.

“I thought you were staying at Nicole’s?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says, and her chest warms just a little bit by saying that. Because she knows that she will go back to Nicole’s and they will sit on the couch and eat take-out and drink tea and maybe have sex afterwards or maybe they’ll just go to bed and that will be fine, too. But she has other matters to attend to, first.

“No, I, uh…” Waverly stops, unsure of how to keep going. “I needed…to pick something up in town.”

Wynonna cocks an eyebrow.

“Wynonna. Um…”It’s hard to find the words, hard to explain. “When the demon jumped back into me, it was different. It told me things. About you.”

Wynonna shrugs a shoulder, looking confused. “So what? Now you know all my secrets?”

She tries to make a joke, but there’s a little bit of fear there. It’s missing the usual snark, the usual swagger.

“I’m not sure even you know this one yet.” Waverly holds out the bag.

Wynonna takes it, uncurls the top, and stares at the pregnancy test inside.

-

It’s positive. Waverly didn’t think it would be anything else, really. Because Mikshun told her a lot of things, but it never lied outright. To other people, yes, but never to her.

So, for now, she’ll play the supportive younger sister and try not to think too hard about those seven weeks stolen from her, about the memories that keep appearing.

She’ll try not to think about the fear that a memory will come forward of her doing something terrible.

But there’s time to deal with that later. Right now, Wynonna is pregnant and Wynonna is scared and Wynonna is angry and Wynonna needs her, and there will be time. Pregnancy takes months, and Wynonna is must not be that far along, and Waverly can deal with her problems in a few days.

Thinks will slow down soon. She’ll have time in a few days.

-

Her dreams are dark and terrible, full of unseen things whispering and black, black eyes.


	2. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Mikshun, after the Widows, after Alice

Nights are already long and hard, Waverly’s dreams leaving the taste of ash on her tongue as she wakes. But the night after the Widows, after the alternate universe, after _Alice_ , is especially hard.

They crowd into the homestead, tired and quiet. Waverly stands in the kitchen with a mug of tea in her hands, Nicole’s arm around her waist and head resting against hers. Dolls is passed out on the couch and Jeremy is curled up like a cat on the armchair, also fast asleep. Doc sits at the kitchen table, an untouched mug of coffee in front of him, long since gone cold. He stares at nothing, gaze unfocused, and Waverly doesn’t blame him. She worries about him, but she doesn’t blame him.

Wynonna is the one Waverly worries about the most, though. She untangles herself from Nicole’s arms and slips through the kitchen, the creaking floorboards and the soft sound of Dolls’ snores the only sounds in the house. She pauses outside the propped open door of Wynonna’s bedroom, knocking gently against the doorframe.

“Wynonna?”

The dark shape on the bed stirs, wrapped in blankets and moving with the cautious slowness that speaks of an aching body. Waverly’s sister blinks at her, eyes bright and deer-like in the dark, a mug in her hands. Waverly doesn’t wait for an invitation, just goes and carefully sits on the edge of the bed. The scent of coffee and the dark burn of whiskey float up from the cup Wynonna’s holding, and Waverly’s heart breaks for her sister.

“Are you okay?” Waverly asks, because she can think of nothing else to say, and Wynonna’s smile is bitter.

“Oh, yeah, I’m totally fine,” Wynonna snarks, shifting in bed. “I’m sitting on a bag of frozen peas and I’m still bleeding and hurting in places no one should ever hurt. But I can have caffeine and alcohol again, so…” she raises her cup in a sarcastic toast, before tipping her head back and downing the rest.

Waverly hesitates. “You have every right not to be fine, Wynonna. You don’t have to be fine.”

Wynonna gives her a look, face creased in irritation. “Babygirl, I know you’re trying to be supportive and whatever, but I’m tired, and I haven’t slept in in, like, two days, and let me tell you, giving birth takes a lot out of you.”

“Are you sure?” Waverly gets up from the bed but lingers in the room, watching her sister’s face. “You don’t have to be alone.”

“Go,” Wynonna says firmly, flopping back into her pillows with a wince and a quick, pained intake of breath. “I’m fine. I want to be alone.”

She’s not fine, Waverly knows she’s not fine, but Wynonna has already settled into the bed, pulling the blankets up, and Waverly knows that if she stays, the reaction from her sister will not be kind.

Wynonna’s not fine, but Waverly doesn’t know how to comfort her. So instead she just closes the door softly behind her and tries not to notice the shaky, trembling breathing Wynonna’s desperately trying to hide. 

-

The next night is different. Nicole’s working the night shift, and Doc and Dolls have gone to deal with Bobo, and Waverly sent Jeremy along with them to act as a buffer. So by the time the clock hits one in the morning the homestead is quieter than it’s been in months, and Waverly sits at the kitchen table nursing her third cup of coffee. The nightmares are the most terrible on the nights where she’s alone, and so on those nights, she just doesn’t sleep.

Her laptop screen blurs before her bleary eyes, and she’s stopped paying attention to whatever stupid sitcom she started hours ago. It was supposed to keep her awake, but if anything, it seems to make her sleepier. Now she just resides in that strange, hazy zone between sleep and wakefulness, propped up on her elbow and her coffee going cold. She has five more hours until Nicole gets off from work, until she can go and curl up beside her girlfriend on the couch and they can fall asleep watching a movie, Calamity Jane on their laps.

If Nicole ever notices the dark circles under Waverly’s eyes, she doesn’t say anything.

Besides, Waverly’s used to being the only one up in the early hours, and even when they have someone crashing on their couch after a particularly interesting day, one AM tends to be pretty quiet. Which is maybe why it’s so jarring to hear the sound. It pulls Waverly out of her light doze, and she blinks, pausing the tv show that’s still playing and pulling her earbuds out. For a moment, there’s quiet, and then there’s the sound again. It’s soft and muffled, but unmistakable.

Waverly doesn’t bother knocking on Wynonna’s door this time, she just goes in. Wynonna is sitting up on the bed, crying. Huge, gulping, heaving sobs, the kind so visceral, so guttural that nothing can hold them back.

“Oh, Wynonna,” Waverly says, climbing up on the bed and wrapping her arms around the sister. Wynonna curls up against her without protest, shaking.

“It’s like the universe is taunting me,” Wynonna chokes out, and at first, Waverly is unsure what she means. But then she notices the two wet spots on Wynonna’s shirt, and it clicks in her brain.

“Your milk came in,” Waverly says, and Wynonna nods bitterly.

“Milk but no baby to feed it to,” Wynonna says, and the lack of fire in her voice is what makes Waverly know she’s in an almost incomprehensible amount of pain. Wynonna wears her anger, her snark, like a suit of armor, a prickly protection against hurt, and she has for as long as Waverly can remember. The lack of this armor, the amount of emotional pain she must be in to let it drop is staggering.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Wynonna sounds like a hollow shell of herself, voice hoarse from crying. “I knew this was coming. I wasn’t supposed to get attached.” She looks at Waverly, tears streaking down her face, and for the first time since Waverly was a kid, she looks _fragile_. “I wasn’t supposed to love her.”

Waverly wraps her arms tighter around Wynonna, who dissolves into tears again. There’s a lump rising in Waverly’s throat and tears push at the corners of her own eyes, but Wynonna is hurting and scared, and Waverly needs to be the strong one. She needs to push back her own emotions and be here for her sister.

And so, they stay like this, curled in the darkness like they’re still children sharing a bed, Wynonna crying harder than Waverly has ever seen her cry. Wynonna is made of glass right now, fine and fragile, breakable if not handled carefully, and Waverly needs to be here, needs to be strong.

Her own emotions can wait.

They can wait.

-

Her nightmares are vivid and terrible, leaving the taste of ash on her tongue when she wakes. The nights that she’s alone are the worst, where she wakes up gasping and crying and shaking, trapped in the cycle of dark, dark nightmares and whispers of barely-there memories, tangling together like thread until she’s not quite aware which are real, and which are fake. Those are the nights she has to get out of bed and go downstairs and make sure that Wynonna’s still there, still alive and breathing, and not dead by Waverly’s own hands.

She dreams of piles of bodies, of people she knows and loves. She dreams of Jeremy, Dolls, and Doc strewn across the ground like broken toys, eyes half-open and _empty_. She dreams of Nicole, sobbing, pleading, even as Waverly watches her own hands snap her love’s neck. She dreams of Wynonna with a gun pointed at her heart, Peacemaker’s muzzle gleaming orange, and she dreams of knocking the gun aside and slitting Wynonna’s throat.

That dream is awful and comes often, and she always wakes up shaking and terrified, Nicole’s pleading and Wynonna’s choking, gurgling cry echoing in her ears. She has it nearly every night, has had it nearly every night since Mikshun was purged from her body.

She dreams of a being curled up in her mind, of a hissing, shadowy voice whispering things in an ancient, unknown language that she can somehow understand in the corners of her skull. She dreams of looking in the mirror to see that her eyes are black, tears like ink dripping down her cheeks.

She dreams of hands severed and of a pain she hopes to never know again.

She dreams of pockets full of silver and of chunks of time huge and blank in her memory.

But the worst dream is the one that comes every single night, after the birth. Of a tiny, squalling baby falling into her hands. Of Wynonna on the pool table, screaming. Screaming as Waverly breaks her newborn niece’s neck. She wakes from the  dream screaming, shaking, sure that she can still feel the blood on her hands, the sound of Alice’s cry so sharply cut off.

The nights she’s alone are the worst.

Those nights she just curls up into a ball under her blankets and sobs until it feels like her lungs are trying to come out of her chest. Soon enough she just stops sleeping on the nights when she’s alone.

She doesn’t get any sleep on those nights, anyways.

-

 

A week after the death of the Widows, after the alternate universe, after Alice, Wynonna and Doc get in a fight.

They’ve been orbiting each other, the Earth and the moon, gravity pulling them together but keeping them apart, circling each other, their pain an almost physical thing to witness. Alice isn’t dead, she’s safe and warm and happy miles away from the Ghost River Triangle, tucked in the arms of her great aunt. But it makes no difference. Wynonna and Doc aren’t mourning a death, they’re mourning the lack of.

The lack of Alice in their arms. The emptiness that came after giving her away. They’re parents now, but they’ve got no child. All they have is the memories, the building anger over having to give her away, and the clash is as inevitable as it is terrible.

Waverly’s never witnessed a fight this _violent_ that involves no blows being thrown. Her fights with Champ were nonexistent, over as quickly as they started because it just wasn’t worth the effort. Her fight with Nicole was cold shoulders and biting words, but neither woman would _ever_ think to raise a hand against the other.

But this…this rattles the walls and makes the ground shake. If Nicole and Waverly fighting is a cold front, then Wynonna and Doc fighting is a hurricane. Waverly doesn’t know how it starts, but she hears it once it gets heated, and she can’t get out of the house because they’re blocking the door and they’re blocking the stairs to the top floor and so she’s stuck in the kitchen _listening_.

“I HAD NO CHOICE,” Wynonna roars, her fury and her grief tangling together in her voice to create something dark and churning. “I HAD NO FUCKING CHOICE, DOC.”

“BUT YOU NEVER THOUGHT, NOT FOR ONE _MOMENT_ , TO LET ME KNOW?” Doc slams his hand against the wall, making the pictures shake in their frames, and Waverly flinches, pressing herself further into the kitchen counter. “SHE’S MY CHILD.”

“Do you not think that this was the hardest choice I have _ever_ had to make?” Wynonna’s no longer yelling, her voice low and _terrible_. “Did you not think that I didn’t have any choice in any of this? If she stayed with us, she would be dead. I did the only thing I could do.”

“You always _HAVE A CHOICE_!”

“Not about getting pregnant.”

It’s a killing blow, wielded with only the sort of cruelty that the raw, burning cocktail of rage and grief can bring.

“The curse has made every single decision for me. I’ve been on two kinds of birth control since I was a teenager. Did you know that? Or about how I had one day, _one fucking day_ to wrap my head around the fact that I was pregnant before someone decided to fuck around with time and I was suddenly blown up like a balloon and too far gone to make any decision other than what do I do when it’s born? Do you know how that feels, Doc? To have your autonomy taken away from you in the blink of an eye?”

“You regret having her.” Doc’s voice is ice, and Waverly shivers, wrapping her arms around herself.

“No, I don’t,” Wynonna says, her voice equally cold. “Because I started loving her. She wormed her way into my heart even though I tried everything I could to not get attached. I feel _empty_ without her. I can feel every damn mile between us every waking minute.”

“But you knew it was coming. And you could prepare yourself for this, and Wynonna? I DIDN’T. I met her, I held her in my arms, and then she was _gone_. As if she never existed.”

“She existed. I _felt_ her existing. I felt her every single moment that I knew she was inside me. She is literally _of_ me, Doc, and giving her up felt like giving a piece of myself away. Do you not think that I didn’t consider every other option? I wake up in the middle of nights thinking that I heard her cry. I reach for her in my sleep only to find her not there. I dream about being pregnant, about her still being with me. So, don’t you fucking _dare_ try to make me feel guilty for making this decision.”

Doc’s voice is trembling, grief and rage and something raw and fragile lacing his every word. “But you only considered your own grief, Wynonna. Have you been considerin’ that maybe I spend every night awake and thinking of her, too? You could’ve told me what you were plannin’.”

“You would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“You’re GODDAMN RIGHT I WOULD HAVE!” Doc is yelling again, and Wynonna is yelling, too. They scream at each other, spitting things about protection and trust and duty, and at some point, Wynonna starts sobbing in rage and Doc’s voice has no emotion in it, as flat and cold as a robot’s.

The door slams, making the doorframes shake, announcing Doc’s exit, and Wynonna comes charging past, all fury and pain and tears, and she doesn’t even look at Waverly, shrunken against the kitchen counter, as she storms into her room and slams her door. The windows rattle, and all is silent.

And Waverly slinks to the floor, buries her face in her arms, and sobs.

She has to be the strong one, but she’s not sure how much longer she can take it.

-

He’s lined up bottles and cans along the fence and on top of the garbage cans and on the woodpile, and he shoots them down one after another.

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang._

Waverly wraps her coat tighter around herself, watching as Doc reloads his gun. She holds out the mug she has in her hands, an offering of sorts. It’s a bit lopsided, painted in various shades of yellow and green, splattered with white polka dots. She made it in art class when she was eleven, and it always makes her smile when she looks at it, remembering the pride she felt when she took it home, carefully wrapped in newspaper and tucked in her backpack.

“I brought you coffee,” she says when Doc takes no move to accept it. She watches as he raises his gun and six more bottles explode along the fence. “I added a bit of whiskey to it. Just to warm it up.”

“I’m not in the mood for coffee,” Doc says gruffly, roughly jamming more bullets into his gun. “Whiskey or no.”

“So, what are you in the mood for?” Waverly watches as he takes down more targets in the span of about ten seconds, the sharp shatter of glass and the tinny clatter of aluminum cans echoing in the still morning air. “Murder?”

She means it to sound like a joke, but the look Doc gives her is so cold she hastily changes the subject.

“You know I’m always here, right, Doc?”

Doc pauses for the barest of seconds, something flickering behind the mask of indifference he’s currently wearing, but then his expression hardens again and he raises his gun.

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang._

“Doc,” Waverly says, placing a hand on his arm, and she realizes that he’s crying. She’s not sure if she can hug him, if their relationship is in a hugging place, so instead she just stands and waits.

“I never thought I’d have a child,” Doc says, and he’s not looking at Waverly, and she can feel him tremble under her hand. “And now I do. But I don’t.”

“And you’re angry.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Doc says, anger creeping up, his face starting to flush. “Just sent Alice away. I held her in my arms and then she was gone, and Wynonna didn’t tell me this was the plan.”

It was the hardest decision Wynonna has ever had to make. Waverly can see this, in the way that Wynonna moves through the house like a ghost, in the way she cries in the night when she thinks no one is watching, in the way a darkness lingers in the corner of every forced smile.

“Wynonna only did it because she believed it was the only option,” Waverly says, slowly, trying not to invoke Doc’s anger. “It tore her up to do.”

And it’s true. Wynonna may have a temper; she’s firestorm bottled up in a woman’s form, but she leads with her heart and does only what she completely believes is right. But in this case, doing so hurt another. And it’s a strange line for Waverly to walk, because she believes that her sister made the right choice, because Doc would have absolutely tried to talk her out of it, and Alice is safer outside of the Ghost River Triangle. But Doc is grieving, and while Waverly thinks he probably suspected, probably guessed Wynonna’s plan, he needs a target for the anger his grief brings.

And that target is the person who sent Alice away, even if it was for her own safety. Even if Wynonna doesn’t deserve it.

“You’re allowed to hurt, Doc,” Waverly finally says. “Just…don’t take that hurt out on Wynonna. You both lost Alice. Just now you know she’s safe.”

And that’s what breaks him. What was one tear falling down his cheek becomes a stream, and he angrily brushes them away. And Waverly can’t just watch anymore. She sets the mug of coffee down onto the grass and hugs him. He stiffens up for one second, but then relaxes, one of his arms winding around her shoulders. They stay like that for a few minutes, until Doc takes a deep, shuddering breath and gently untangles himself from Waverly.

“I’ll take that coffee now if it’s still bein’ offered,” he says, and he sounds like _Doc_ again. Waverly scoops the mug up from the ground and passes it to him, sure it’s now ice cold, but he downs it in two swallows and hands it back to her.

She takes it, tucking it close to her chest, and Doc reloads his gun, focusing on the remaining six bottles along the fence.

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang._

They go down one after another, and he gives a satisfied smile and tucks the gun into his belt.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, giving an _after you_ gesture. “it’s freezin’ out here.”

They climb the steps back up to the homestead, and a tiny bit of weight lifts off Waverly’s shoulders.

But just a little.

-

She wakes up with a start, breathlessly sobbing, sheets in tangled around her arms and legs, trapping her, and Nicole’s hand on her shoulder.

“Waves, baby, it’s okay, you’re just dreaming,” Nicole says, eyes wide and bright in the dark, and Waverly gasps, the panic making her lungs tight, because she knows it was a dream, knows it wasn’t real but she can still remember how it felt to slit Wynonna’s neck, can feel the blood rushing down her hands, coating her wrists, the way the dream shifted to her on a table in the back room of a nightclub as a demon brings a bone blade down-

“Waverly, just focus on breathing, okay?” Nicole breathes, loud and exaggerated, and Waverly forces herself to copy, forces her lungs to fill, her chest to expand. “That’s it. In, out.”

Waverly breathes, and then she cries. For the first time after Mikshun, after the Widows, after Alice, Waverly really, truly cries. No choked down sobs, no tears muffled into pillows. She curls into Nicole’s arms and cries as her girlfriend strokes her hair and whispers soothing things into her ear.

When she finally stops, when she wipes the tears from her face, she draws back, just a little bit. She and Nicole are still touching; one of Nicole’s hands rests on Waverly’s shoulder, one of Waverly’s arms is curled over Nicole’s waist. They’re face to face, noses almost touching, and Nicole waits, and Waverly hears herself _telling_.

“I don’t sleep most nights,” she says.

“I have nightmares of killing everyone I love, of Mikshun whispering in my ear,” she says.

“I was the first person to ever hold Alice,” she whispers, because it feels like the kind of thing you should whisper. She and Nicole are under piles of blankets, and Calamity Jane is a lump at their feet, and shadows of Nicole’s tiny house are both strange and familiar, and confessions fall from Waverly’s tongue. "I delivered her, Nicole. And I was scared to death the entire time, but I caught her, I held her, and I dream about killing her.”

A tear streaks down her cheek, and Nicole reaches out to brush it away with her thumb. “Baby,” Nicole whispers, “How long have you been having these nightmares?”

“Since Mikshun,” Waverly confesses, and a weight is off her shoulders, and she nearly starts crying again because of the relief. “And I know it’s gone, but sometimes I think I hear it whispering, or I forget why I walked into a room and suddenly I’m panicking. I don’t trust myself anymore, Nicole.”

“Oh, Waverly,” Nicole breathes, pressing her forehead against her girlfriend’s. Waverly closes her eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath, clenching a fist in the back of Nicole’s pajama top.

“What am I supposed to do, Nicole?” Waverly asks helplessly.

“I don’t know,” Nicole whispers. “I think all we can do is keep going.” She kisses Waverly’s forehead, letting her lips linger. “You’re okay. Mikshun is dead and Alice is safe and you’re okay, and you can sleep now. Remember I’m here.”

The words blend, a strange, lovely sort of lullaby, Nicole whispering _I’m here I’m here I’m here_ over and over in Waverly’s ear, and this time when she falls asleep there are no nightmares.

-

Waverly doesn’t trust herself anymore.

She reaches into the silverware drawer and for a single second, thinks about pocketing one of the gleaming silver spoons.

She passes the hallway mirror, and out of the corner of her eye, she could swear that her eyes are black as coal.

She falls asleep on the couch watching a movie with Wynonna and wakes up again a couple hours later, panicking and sure she’s lost time.

The panic attacks come regularly and swiftly, bowling her over in their force, and she barely has the time to get away before they fully hit. She has to be the strong one.

But she doesn’t _feel_ strong.

She’s locked in the bathroom and her lungs won’t expand _and her chest is tight and the ground is spinning beneath her and she swears her eyes are black and she can’t breathe can’t make her chest expand and she can’t fucking breathe-_

“You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine,” she whispers to herself, over and over, until she can breathe again and the ground is once more solid beneath her feet.

She doesn’t want to admit it to herself how much being possessed has changed her, doesn’t want to admit that it’s changed her, but it has. She’s always been confident in herself, always been sure and solid in the concept of _Waverly_ , but Mikshun has stolen that away from her.

Combine that with the fact that suddenly, her parentage is up in the air means that she’s about as steady on her feet as newborn giraffe, stumbling where she once would have been solid.

Dolls called it Legion, Waverly remembers. And it makes sense, the name. Even gone, Mikshun still has a hold on her, like one or two of those thousands of grasping, clawing fingers have remined in her brain. And she knows, logically, that it’s impossible, that Mikshun is currently rotting in hell with every other demon Peacemaker has vanquished, but she still worries.

Sometimes she thinks about trepanation.

She’d learned about it during one of her research bouts. Doctors apparently used to do it to people acting abnormally, believing that the hole would allow the evil spirits to leave the person they were inhabiting. Chances are, it has no basis in truth, and that all it did was kill people rather than help. And she’d never actually drill a hole in her skull, especially since Mikshun is gone, _is really gone_ , but she still finds herself thinking. About how maybe there was some truth to the myth. About how sometimes it still feels like there’s a creature whispering in the back of her skull, even though she knows there’s not, that Mikshun is long gone.

It’s called Legion for a reason, she reminds herself. And it’s not an experience she’s likely to forget.

But every time she finds herself thinking about it, every time the word _trepanation_ crosses her mind she’s reminded about how much she’s changed. About how sometimes she doesn’t even recognize her own mind anymore.

And it’s lonely and it’s terrifying and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do.

Waverly doesn’t trust herself anymore, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been so _scared._

-

They’re all haunted by ghosts.

Nicole is haunted by Widows, by the burn of their poison in her veins, because after all, Waverly isn’t the only one with nightmares.

Doc and Wynonna are haunted by Alice, haunted by the futures stolen from them as soon as Hypnos fussed with time.

Dolls is haunted by…something. She’s sensed this since they first met, but he hasn’t actually disclosed what those ghosts are yet. Waverly won’t pry. He’ll tell when he’s ready.

And Waverly? Her ghosts just seem to be building up. She’s haunted by Mikshun and its claws in her mind. She’s haunted by Alice, the niece she helped bring into the world and hand off barely an hour alter. She’s haunted by Mama, by Daddy, by Willa.

She thought it was getting better. But then she misses a bottle when she’s practicing with her shotgun and she hears Daddy’s voice in her ear, calling her _useless_.

She doesn’t know the answer to a question, and Willa is there and calling her _stupid_.

She looks at the binder on her desk, the paperwork that spells it out so clearly that she is not who she thought she was, and she remembers Mama being there one day and gone the next, and Daddy telling her that _she left because of you, she doesn’t want to be your mama anymore_.

That folder has become one of her ghosts, bringing all her old ghosts back, but she can’t get rid of it. Slowly, agonizingly, old Waverly is being peeled back layer by layer, and all it took was a demon in her head.

-

They’ve stopped yelling at each other, but Waverly doesn’t think this is any better.

Wynonna and Dolls had dragged a sparring mat into the barn ages ago, but for the most part it had remained leaning against the wall and gathering dust. But now Wynonna has let it flop down and dusted it off, and under the guise of getting back into shape she has started taunting Doc.

“Come on, old man,” she says, bouncing on her toes on the edge of the mat, smirking at Doc. “Are you afraid that I’ll kick your ass?”

“Never,” Doc growls, and Waverly is concerned to see how easily Wynonna has gotten under his skin.

She’s even more concerned at the ferocity at which they go at each other.

Sparring is just something that’s done around the Earp homestead. They’ve got a mat in the black badge offices as well and it’s a rare day where it’s not put to some sort of use. It’s fun and it’s a way to let off steam while honing their combat skills, and of course they spend the entire time goading each other on, because how else do you spar?

But Doc and Wynonna are _vicious_. There’s no taunting, no good-natured teasing. Doc just strips off his shirt and steps onto the mat, bouncing up and down a couple of times. And then they go at it, and the intensity at which they do makes Waverly worry.

Doc sweeps Wynonna’s legs out from under her and Wynonna flips him over her as she goes down and he hits the mat with a thud that makes Waverly’s ribs ache, but Doc is already rolling over, grabbing at her arm to yank it behind her back but Wynonna rolls and sinks a knee into Doc’s gut.

And they go at it for _hours_. They forgo meals and ignore bedtimes in favor of trying their very best to beat each other to a pulp, all the while pretending that it’s still a perfectly innocent sparring match.

They haven’t hurt each other yet, but Waverly privately thinks that it’s just a matter of time. That soon enough one of them will come in with something more serious than a bruise from hitting a mat or a bloody nose from an accidental elbow to the face.

She knows that they’re trying to work out the strange tension now brewing between them however they can. And this is a (relatively) safe way to do so without risk of serious physical or mental harm. But it’s not healthy, even Waverly can see that, and she’s the one currently drowning under the weight of her nightmares and her distrust of her own mind.

But neither of them are the kind of people to sit down and talk it out, and she knows that the suggestion will instantly be waved away in favor of whatever weird ritual this is rapidly becoming, so all she can do is sit back and watch.

She hopes that they eventually sort it out, whatever method they choose.

-

Her nightmares are shifting, changing, _evolving_.

She can no longer stay awake on the nights she and Nicole don’t share a bed. Exhaustion drags at her bones every waking minute, no matter how much coffee she drinks, and to spend several nights a week sleepless would turn her into a zombie.

Her nightmares remain vivid and terrible.

She dreams of the bodies of her loved ones still, but instead of watching herself kill them she watches as a giant tentacle curls around them, a black-eyed Willa watching from atop it.

She dreams of drowning, the goo dragging her under, filling her mouth her nose her ears her eyes with thick, dark fluid and the taste of tar, and she fights even as she can feel her lungs fill, but she just keeps sinking deeper and deeper.

She dreams of a dark, formless creature, made of shadows and mist and cold curling around her shoulders, pushing at her mouth, so cold it burns her skin. She clenches her mouth until her jaw aches and she can hear her teeth crack, but still the thing pushes, white-hot pain coursing through her body as she fights against it, even as she feels her strength slowly get sapped away.

She dreams of delivering Alice, but instead of her being warm and pink and wriggling and _screaming_ as she falls into Waverly’s waiting hands, she’s cold and still and blue and silent. Wynonna makes no sound, and when Waverly looks up at her sister, grief coursing through her, she sees her sister is grinning, cruel and inhuman, mouth stretched too wide, her eyes a black void and leaking inky tears.

Waverly doesn’t cry when she wakes up anymore. She just doesn’t have the strength. Instead she lies in her bed and stares at the ceiling and waits for either the warm glow of morning or for sleep to pull her under, and the whole cycle starts again.

-

They’ve heard nothing from Bulshar. Not one rumble of displeasure nor ransacking of a bar, and in the case of tracking down bad guys, Waverly decides she likes Bobo’s way better. It’s easier to find and therefor easier to figure out what to do.

But Bulshar seems to have just…vanished. Disappeared into thin air like he was never there, leaving neither footprint nor strand of hair behind him. And, as much as it pains Waverly to admit, researching can only get them so far, so it seems like they just need to wait the demon out.

This sucks, and it’s also why when Dolls announced he was going to go poke around the mine shaft again Waverly volunteered to go with him. She needs to get out of the Homestead, out of the spiral she seems to be falling into.

The car ride is silent. Dolls, apparently, isn’t one for the radio, and although his car is warm and comfortable, Waverly thinks that she’d maybe prefer the bumpy old pick-up with it’s broken heat and blasting radio. Plus, Dolls keeps glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, just to her and back to the road, over and over. It’s a little annoying at first, and her irritation rapidly builds with every time he does it, until she finds herself snapping at him.

“ _What?_ ”

Dolls doesn’t seem surprised or irritated at her snappish tone. He just calmly returns his attention to the road.

“How are you doing?” he asks conversationally, and for a second, Waverly considers strangling him, and then sighs. It’s too much effort, and, honestly, to be asked the question instead of asking other people is refreshing.

“Not great,” she finds herself admitting, and he glances over at her, and eyebrow raised, and waits.

“I feel like I’m drowning,” she says, and his eyebrows fly up. “All the time. Like I can barely keep my head above water. And every time I think I may be getting close to shore, another wave washes over me and drags me deeper.”

“Because of the baby?”

“Yes,” Waverly says, “and no. I mean, she’s part of it. But also…I haven’t really felt myself since before Willa. And Mikshun just made it worse.”

She shudders at the name. She doesn’t think she’s said it aloud before now, and it tastes sour on her tongue, lingering in the air of the car. In some cultures, names have power, and it feels a little bit like saying the demon’s name is giving up some of her own.

“It’s not an experience you’ll forget soon,” Dolls says, turning the truck down a dirt road. “The feeling of being a host is not a comfortable one, even if you consented to it. Especially if you didn’t. And Legion is a particularly nasty one to share a head with.”

Waverly looks over at him. “Did you…did you consent to it? To being a host?”

Dolls pauses for a long second before answering. “Yes…and no. I did not agree to this. Black Badge did it without my permission. But I’m not a host, for one, because what’s inside me is not a passenger. Your experience with Mikshun is vastly different than my experience for that very reason.”

“I have nightmares. I have since it left me.”

 “I would be surprised if you didn’t.”

“I feel like I haven’t been allowed to grieve Alice.” She exhales, and then laughs, once and without humor. She hadn’t really thought about it, but it’s true. It’s been lingering in the back of her mind for these last few weeks, but she hasn’t truly put it into words before now. And it makes her feel selfish, so, so selfish, but it’s also a relief to finally say.

Doc glances over at her. “Oh?” His voice holds no judgement, no curiosity. It’s just calm as always, waiting for her to continue.

“She’s my niece,” Waverly says, and suddenly, she feels like crying. “I delivered her. I was the first person to hold her. I was the person who introduced her to Doc, and I was the person who handed her off, but Doc and Wynonna lost a child and they’re clearly the ones who should be grieving but I am, too, and I feel like I haven’t gotten a chance.”

Annnd she’s crying. Again. She feels like she’s done nothing but cry for weeks. Dolls reaches over her and opens the glove box to reveal a box of tissues, which he sets in her lap. She wipes her eyes and laughs.

“God, that feels good to say.”

“And you’re allowed to say it.” Dolls parks the car in the little clearing, the entrance to the mineshaft directly in front of them. “It was a traumatic experience for everyone involved, and you were in the thick of it. You’re allowed to grieve, even if Wynonna and Doc aren’t in the place to acknowledge that.”

“Remember when we had normal problems?” Waverly asks, climbing out of the car. Dolls grins.

“You mean other than checking to make sure a demon isn’t causing trouble and nightmares after being possessed by a centuries old demon?”

“Yeah.”

“Nope.” Dolls slams the door, checking his gun at his side.

“I don’t either,” Waverly admits, tucking her hands into her pockets, following the marshal towards the blocked off entrance of the mine. Life in Purgatory has never been normal, no matter how much she or others may have tried to pretend otherwise in the past.

The dirt is still frozen beneath their feet despite winter slowly starting to release its cold grasp on the landscape, and for a minute the only sound is the crunching of their boots against it.

Waverly breaks that silence. “Hey, Dolls?”

He glances over his shoulder at her. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

That earns her a rare smile. “Anytime, Earp.”

“Now,” Waverly says, cheer once more flooding into her voice. “Let’s find a demon, shall we?”

They don’t find a demon. They find Bobo’s blood and a destroyed coffin and what looks disturbingly like a skeleton hand, but any other traces of Bulshar are long gone.

Waverly doesn’t think that either of them expected any different, but none of them are very good at waiting for the baddies to come to them. But it seems like they’re just going to have to wait Bulshar out.

-

Waverly hasn’t seen Jeremy in a while. This is mostly her fault; she hasn’t really left the Homestead other than to go to Nicole’s, and Jeremy hasn’t been back since that first, long night. And Waverly knows his path doesn’t really stray from the BBD offices and the lab beneath Shorty’s and his apartment, so they have just kind of missed each other for the last couple weeks.

But  Waverly has always been someone who looks to be doing something at all times, and weeks of doing nothing has really started to grate on her. So, she goes to the BBD offices, to her books and her notes and, as it turns out, to Jeremy.

He’s sitting at his desk, giant red headphones over his ears, drumming against the surface, clearly not doing whatever work he came in to door. Waverly clears her throat, but Jeremy doesn’t seem to notice. She sighs, feeling like she’s flashing back to their first meeting.

“Jeremy!”

He yelps and spins around, looking extraordinarily guilty for someone who was just listening to music. “It wasn’t One Direction!”

Waverly just looks at him, and Jeremy sighs. “It was One Direction.”

“Jeremy, I don’t care.”

“Right,” Jeremy says, nodding. He spins around in his chair so he’s fully facing Waverly, propping his elbows on his knees. “Did you need me for something?”

Waverly shakes her head, flopping into her own chair. “No. I just needed to be doing something. Have you gotten any leads on Bulshar?”

“Not one.” Jeremy spins around so he’s facing his laptop, glumly staring at the screen. “It’s like he’s vanished off the face of the earth. Which is _massively_ concerning, considering his plans probably involve death and murder and eventual world domination, which would be _very_ not cool.”

Waverly looks down at the books spread across her desk, untouched by anyone except her, full of precious information, but somehow, Waverly doesn’t think any of it will be able to help. They’ve dealt with revenants and demons and monsters, but Bulshar falls into a whole other category. He’s old and he’s powerful and he’s tied into their family’s history the way no other adversary has. Sure, the revenants have been killed by generation after generation of Earps, but Bulshar is the one who started that all in motion. He’s the original.

And Jeremy’s right; it’s extremely concerning that they’ve heard nothing from him. Waverly doesn’t like it, doesn’t like it at all, but short of trying to lure him out they have no power in this situation. And they’re not in a place to lure him out.

Wynonna and Doc still are either not talking or they’re sparring, and even if they were talking, Waverly’s not totally sure they’re in a place to take down the most recent Big Bad, emotionally or physically or otherwise. And without Wynonna, heir and wielder of Peacemaker, and Doc Holliday, fastest gunslinger in the West, they’re what? A lizard-dragon man, a tech nerd, a police officer, and an Earp, but not the Earp with the destiny? They could get shit done, for sure, but she’s not sure if they could _get shit done_.

Jeremy is not one who’s comfortable with silences, especially not silences that may be a little awkward. He twists back and forth in his chair, finally blurting out a question in an attempt to kill the silence.

“So…how’s it going? Interesting things happening?”

He sounds horribly awkward, and looks a little bit like he expects Waverly to yell at him. And maybe she would’ve a few days ago, or even a few weeks ago, back when everything was new and raw and not just a part of her new reality. But now she’s too tired. Too…over it.

She’s over it. She’s over tiptoeing around Wynonna and Doc and over the nightmares and over the panic attacks and she’s just _fucking over it_.

Which she tells Jeremy. Who shrugs and says, “Yeah, I bet.”

It’s not the reaction she was expecting, which is so damn refreshing.

Jeremy reclines in his chair, attempting to swing his legs up onto the desk. He instead knocks a cup of pens off, which scatter across the floor. He immedietely leaps from his chair to gather them up, not looking in the least bit embarrassed.

“I mean,” he says, scooping up sharpies in various bright colors, “it’s all that’s being talked about right now, and that’s bound to get old.”

“Exactly!” Waverly exclaims. “I mean, I get that it’s horrible, I get it, I feel it, but it’s all we’ve been talking about and I feel like I’m drowning under the weight of it, sometimes.”

“Well, that’s why we have therapists, right?”

Waverly stops. Jeremy looks up, confused at her silence. “Do you guys not have therapists?”

“Do you?”

“Well, yeah.” Jeremy sets the cup of pens back into his desk and carefully sitting back down. “BBD had a couple around. Monster hunters aren’t the most emotionally stable people.” He laughs, turning back to his computer, but Waverly sits at her desk.

A therapist?

She’d never even considered the idea. She’s been to one before, back when she was newly living with Gus and Curtis. She remembers the room; painted a soothing pale green, and the cushy couch and the way that the therapist sat on the floor and colored with her while they talked about Wynonna and Daddy and Willa and Mama. She’d gone once a week for about three months, and then the appointments had slowly faded away as she got more and more comfortable in the new life she had with her aunt and uncle.

Maybe she needs to look into this. She’s tired of waiting on pins and needles for the next panic attack. She’s tired of spending most of her nights awake and shaking because of nightmares. She’s just tired, period, and she’d like to not be anymore.

“Thanks, Jeremy,” she says, standing up and swinging her purse over her shoulder. Jeremy looks up from his computer screen, his headphones back on and looking comically large.

“For what?”

“For this.”

He still looks confused, but Waverly is already halfway out the door. She’s going to go find Nicole.

-

“Are you still getting nightmares?”

Nicole’s hand pauses. She’d been tracing her fingers up and down Waverly’s bare arm, drawing little patterns against the skin. They’re curled up in Nicole’s bed, in that soft, quiet place that comes after sex and before sleep, both of them naked and warm. It’s a safe place, it’s always been a safe place, and not for the first time Waverly is struck by the stark difference between her relationship with Nicole and her relationship with Champ.

“I am,” Nicole says finally, her motions resuming. “Not as often, not as bad, but I still am.”

“What are they like?”

Nicole hesitates. “They’re…brief, and violent, usually. Like flashbacks, y’know? Of Widow Mercedes biting my arm, and then of me being in the back of the ambulance, and then I’m in the hospital bed. And there’s the pain, running through it like an undercurrent.”

Waverly reaches out, flips Nicole’s arm over to trace the raised, white scars. The wound had healed itself somewhere between administering the antidote and waking up after the fake universe created (accidently) by Gretta, but still the scars remain. They’re not as vivid as they were the first few weeks, angry and red and raised, but they’re still there. A reminder.

“Do you still have nightmares?” Nicole asks, looping her arm over Waverly’s waist.

“I do,” Waverly admits. “Every night.”

And she does. They’re fading away now, a little less jarring when she wakes, but they’re still dark and churning and terrible. She still wakes up in a sweat, still has to go and check to make sure her loved ones aren’t dead by her own hand. She’s not sure if they’ll ever go away.

“It’s hard,” she says, wiggling closer to Nicole. “To feel like this. To not know if it will ever stop.”

“I think it will.” Nicole is silent for minute, and Waverly can feel her grip tighten. “You give yourself enough time and you start to heal. That’s just how it works.”

“Time,” Waverly sighs, “the one thing we don’t seem to have enough of.”

Nicole laughs. “At least we don’t have to worry about Hypnos screwing everything up. One person messin’ around with time is one too many.”

They lie in bed, surrounded by darkness, but Waverly is struck by how different a darkness it is. Both of their dreams are tinged in darkness that’s cold and sharp and painful, but this is warm and soft. It’s a darkness of a lover’s bedroom, an extra blanket wrapping them up. And Waverly may fear the darkness of her dreams, but the dark of Nicole’s bedroom is not one to be feared.

She kisses Nicole, tangles her fingers in Nicole’s hair and kisses her, soft and almost chaste, before pulling away. Nicole’s eyes are closed, and Waverly closes her own eyes, pressing her forehead to her girlfriend’s.

“Maybe, someday,” she whispers, “everything will be fine.”

“I hope so.” Nicole’s voice is soft as a sigh.

They drift.

“Nicole?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

-

She finds Wynonna on the front porch of the homestead, a thermos in her hands. She’s sitting on the swing, rocking back and forth, and Waverly stands over her.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Go ahead.” Wynonna pats the empty space next to her, stopping the swing’s movement to allow Waverly to sit down. As soon as she’s settled Wynonna starts up the gentle movement again.

“Do you remember when we broke this?”

Waverly laughs at the memory. “We were trying to swing as high as possible, and one of the chains broke!” She can still remember the brief, dizzying sensation of falling, of one end of the swing hitting the ground. She’d ended up on Wynonna’s lap and Wynonna had ended up with a bruised ribcage from where she had hit the armrest.

“Daddy was so mad.” Wynonna takes a sip from her thermos, still gently rocking. “I remember the way he yelled, and he made me fix it.”

“And despite your shoddy workmanship it’s still standing today,” Waverly quips. “It’s a miracle.”

“We used to sit and swing on this for hours, you and me.” Wynonna’s voice grows thick. “And for a while I allowed myself to imagine Alice on the swing, too.”

It’s the first time Waverly has heard her say Alice’s name since the birth. She rests her head on Wynonna’s shoulder, and Wynonna takes a deep, shuddering breath and clears her throat.

“Stupid, right?” She asks, giving a watery laugh. “Almost crying over a porch swing.”

“It’s not stupid.” Waverly reaches down to grab her sister’s hand. “This isn’t what any of us wanted.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.” Wynonna stares out over the Earp property, her swinging slowly coming to a stop. “I won’t until I break the curse, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever even be able to do that.”

“You’ll see her again,” Waverly says, she _promises_. “We’ll break this curse. Bulshar will show his ugly face and we will kill him and we will break this curse and get Alice back.”

“And dance naked over his grave,” Wynonna says, which so much relish in her voice that Waverly isn’t sure if she’s joking or not.

“Sure.”

Wynonna rests her head on top of Waverly’s. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, babygirl. I’m glad Mikshun didn’t make your head explode.”

“I’m very glad about that, too.” Waverly squeezes her sister’s hand. “Everything will work out, Wynonna. It always does.”

And, for maybe the first time after Mikshun, after the Widows, after Alice, Waverly actually feels like it might be true.

-

Maybe everything will be okay.

Bulshar still hasn’t been heard of, and so now they’re waiting him out, but Waverly figures that’s fine. It gives them time to heal, to slowly fit together their broken pieces. She’d learned about kintsugi years ago, about the Japanese method of mending broken pottery with gold, making what was once cracked beautiful again. It’s a fitting metaphor, in Waverly’s opinion.

They’re all hurting. They all have raw edges and chipped pieces, cracks and dents, but they’re healing, and there’s something beautiful about that.

There are still the nights where Wynonna comes to breakfast with red-rimmed eyes and a hoarse voice. There are still the days where Doc turns into a shell of himself and lines bottles up along the fence to shoot them down, one by one.

There are still the nights where Waverly wakes up, shaking from nightmares. Still the times where she forgets why she was walking into the room or thinks her eyes are black and feels the panic wash over her.

But it’s getting better. Slowly and surely, it’s getting better.

She gets a therapist. And she can’t say everything, clearly. She turns Mikshun into a manipulative, emotionally abusive ex and lets the therapist think that Alice was stillborn, not sent away. But it feels good to talk to someone who’s impartial, who’s here to listen and to help.

And hey, maybe she knows more than she’s letting on. This is Purgatory, after all.

Slowly, Waverly’s nightmares start to fade. Slowly, her panic attacks stop coming.

She still has bad nights, nights where she wakes up sobbing, but on those nights she can curl up in Nicole’s arms and she reminds herself that she’s okay, that she’ll be fine.

And she will be. They will be.

After all, they have time.

And eventually, everything will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm apparently not super great about keeping my promises as to when I'd post the new chapter, but it's here! It's up! And just in time for probably everything I wrote in it to be proven to be very wrong by season three! 
> 
> Anyways, thank you guys for reading and for the kudos and for commenting. It means so much to me to hear that people like my little angst-fest. And, if you want to come and chat about the Earps and the show in general, you can find me on twitter at @ainewrites!


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